Maha's musings

Have you ever cribbed in front of mirror frustrated, trying to thrust yourself into that favourite kurti which you have successfully outgrown?  Have you ever felt embarrassed to be a friend of girls who have bucket full of love stories where all your talks are rejected as an uninteresting bucket list? In the era of rapid changes, where women are spotted everywhere right from steering trucks to launching rockets, it is paradoxical to spot women who are being body shamed, looked down upon or undervalued especially under the pretext of finding grooms. It is heartwrenching to see parents who preach their daughters to have high self esteem and self respect fall headlong into the whirl of big fat Indian wedding and forget everything.  The book "Encounters of a Fat Bride" deals with the life of Madhurima Pandey who is fed up with her family members' back to back attempts to get her married. Chances of Madhu, getting married seems slim because she is not....

"I buy her expensive gifts and shower her with things she loves. But she seems unsatisfied always." "I make bed, I take the trash out, I take my children to school even amidst my smothering routine..but she does not acknowledge at all.. My efforts clearly have no value.." I do this, I do that but still I can't keep our bond intact. There are brawls, disagreements and arguments. We can't make it. What is the secret behind all those successful couples who lead their HAPPILY EVER AFTERs with ease? This is the billion dollar question that resonates in most of our minds. But, Gary Chapman's "The Five Love Languages " proves that there is nothing called "happily ever after ". He provides some key insights on the reality behind love and life and how to tackle it with some real life instances.  It is easy to fall in love but staying in love needs constant efforts and unwavering commitment. No matter how much we feel loved in the ...

Book Review RETURN TO INDIA -A MEMOIR- by Shoba Narayan Home is where the heart is... Indian diaspora is rich and widespread across the globe. Shoba Narayan, being a part of it, shares her journey from being a rebellious Indian teen who aspires to be an American citizen to becoming a naturalized American who yearns to go back to India, the homeland. This coming of age memoir deals mainly with the author's life and how she feels alienated in America— the country which she once thought to be her Utopia. Shoba Narayan deals mainly with the growth in the psyche of an Indian teen (in eighties). In the earlier chapters America is shown to be a dreamland. The relatives abroad, the series, comics and other entertaining things foster in her a deep sense of longing for America. She deems it to be an escape from the tight clutch of her orthodox family and to be a place where opportunities are abound.  "It was the land of the free, home of the brave. Struck in a s...

"Angry River"  by Ruskin Bond Ruskin Bond is an octogenarian contemporary writer. Being a versatile writer, he has tried his hand in various genres ranging from novels, short stories, novellas and poems in English. " The Angry River" is one among his novellas. It is typical of Bond to create down-to-earth characters who can be seen in daily life and are easily relatable. "The Angry River" deals with people living in the lap of nature— Sita, a little girl who lives in a secluded island with her grandparents on the bank of a river. As she has no one else to share her secrets with, she herself makes a doll with her grandma's help, out of quilts and names her Mumta.  She leads a carefree life by spending most of her time taking care of her sickly grandparents and doing chores—cooking, milking the goats and taking care of the chickens.  Once when her grandma's health deteriorates, her grandpa has to take her to Shahgunj, a faraway village a...

Reading books is always an escape from reality. When it comes to reading Ruskin Bond's, it's an escape to a wonderland where there is no place for worries. To add more pleasure to it, the book was suggested by a 14 year old girl.  While we were engaged in an engrossing conversation—all about reading, I accidentally mentioned Bond's" Blue Umbrella " as one of my favourite reads and suitable for children.  She countered me with n number of books— "The Angry River", "The Naughtiest Girl in the School", "Percy Jackson", "Nancy Drew", "Famous Five", "Find-outers and Dog", etc...., the list stretched.  The glee in her eyes and her curiosity enthused me and I assured her that I would read those books for sure. She went a step further and lent her book to me willingly, so that I could read.I felt so overwhelmed and promised her that I would give her another book to read in turn. When I grabbed the bo...

  It's not we who find love, it's the other way around! WHEN DIMPLE MET RISHI... so many things happen -- fight, hatred, hope, friendship, kismat's game and finally love. This beautiful romantic-comedy takes us to a whimsical world where love is in the air. The author, Sandhya Menon has skilfully characterized the couple - Rishi and Dimple who are the two sides of the same coin and entirely different in their characters, personalities, likes and dislikes.  Dimple Shah, an eighteen year old Indian girl living in the US, wants to win "Insomnia Con." an initiative held in Stanford, so that she can make her dream app come to reality with the help of her idol -- Jenny Lindt. Things are not easy though, she has to convince her father to eke out money and her mother to let her stay away from her desperate search for Ideal Indian Husband (IIH) . It's a stroke of luck that they allow her to participate, which Dimple can barely believe.  Rishi Patel on the other hand is...

BOOK REVIEW Who Moved My Cheese?  by Dr.Spencer Johnson  Changes are inevitable. They can be in our life, in our business or anywhere else. Most of us resist changes as we are not mentally prepared for that. But changes are not essentially bad all the times. They prepare us mentally to progress in our life. Adapting ourselves to changes improves us in amazing ways.  The book starts with a gathering of friends where one of them narrates this story to help others, deal with changes in their lives.The parable is about two mice -- Sniff and Scurry and two little people -- Hem and Haw. These characters depict the simple and complex parts of our brains. Everything is metaphorical here. The  maze  they live in represents  life; The cheese  they keep looking for represents  money, job, love or any such thing that gives us happiness. Sniff  sniffs the problems before they occur.  Scurry  scurries fast on the face of problems.  Hem ...

Book Review The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni The book with the pages of pains, sufferings, yearnings, betrayals, guilt and finally salvation (of Panchaali) -- The Palace of Illusions It is always invigorating to read or listen to the story of  the great Indian epic -- The Mahabharata. There are numerous retelling of this epic in the forms of novels, plays, movies, series, etc., "The Palace of Illusions" stands unique from them all as it features Panchaali as a narrator who recounts the legend from her viewpoint. While reading the novel I could see the scenes so vividly through the eyes of Paanchaali.   The plot begins with the magical birth of Panchaali from the yagnya fire, next to her brother Dhri. Right from the birth, she is ignored by her father for being a girl. Panchaali, being too innocent to understand the sociaty, yearns to fulfil the purpose of her life. Years pass under the protection of her nanny (Dhaima) and the friendship of K...

Can there be a man as loyal as Hasan? as guilt-ridden as Amir? as majestic as Baba? as submissive as Ali? as prodigious as Sohrab?  as wicked as Assef? The Kite Runner deals with the lives of two Afghan  boys - Amir and Hasan. The novel is in first person narrative from the point of view of Amir which enables us to view his guilt, longings, insecurities, anger and love in a vivid way. It's a mixture of friendship, loyalty and inevitably betrayal and guilt.  Amir is the son of rich and well known Baba. Throughout his life he longs to gain his father's  love. When the novel begins, he is a motherless small boy. He and his servant Hasan are fed by the same nurse. Albeit being his master, he never treats hasan as his servant but as his friend perhaps as a brother.  Hasan is the son of Ali who is the servant of Baba. Like Amir and Hasan, they both too share the bond of friendship as they both too were fed by the same nurse. Despite being Hasaras, Ali and his son are ...

"The thing of beauty is joy forever" says Keats.   "The Blue Umbrella" by Ruskin Bond shows us how the beauty attracts everyone and how the attraction leads to obsession.  The novel starts with Binya,  a 10 year old girl from a village in Himalayas goes in search of her cows — Neelu and Gori in the valleys. There she sees some tourists, camped and a beautiful blue umbrella, kept open on the ground. It's so pretty and frilly, looks like a giant blue wild flower sprung up on the muddy ground. When one of the tourists asks for the leapord claw pendant she has worn in exchange for the blue umbrella, she readily accepts the deal and happily gets that from them. From the moment she gets that, she never closes that; wherever she goes she takes that along with her with great pride. The umbrella is neither big nor small for her. It covers her perfectly. The colour and its floral shape attracts everyone from the village.  Ram Barosa, a teashop owner in the vil...

Stories are part and parcel of human life. We are the outcome of the stories we have heard. As  Yuval Noah Harari  has rightly pointed out in his book  'Sapiens'  , stories are the most distinguished feature that enabled Homosapiens to survive and led to  cognitive revolution . The book I have chosen is  "Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul".  It's an anthology of the handpicked short stories written under various topics. One among them was  "A Drive to Dance".  It's a real life story of a well-known sope opera actress and a dancer,  Sudha Chandran.  Her life itself is a great lesson that shows  everything is possible if we have the mental toughness to achieve that.  Sudha Chandran was a born dancer. She gave her first stage performance at the age of eight and has received many noteworthy awards. But her ill-fate played its role and she met with a terrible accident. Due to that, her leg was amputed seven and a half inches bel...

"Teacher Plus" magazine takes up thought provoking themes on education every month. In one of the articles, the writer discusses the significance of travelling in the pursuit of learning. "Travel expands the mind and fills the gap" . Travelling expands us and transforms us entirely. When we are inside the four walls of the classroom, we learn theories but when we step out of the class, we acquire practical knowledge through real life experiences. They help us to sustain our lives in this competitive world.  The writer introduces a term " gap year ". It is almost like " career gap ". The later is a period of time spent away from work for varied reasons. Whereas the earlier is when a student takes a year off after finishing school and before starting college; perhaps to find out what he/she wants to pursue in life. It gives ample time to travel and explore and thereby enables him/her to research on a particular subject which he/she is i...

" Bounce Forward" by Sam Cawthorn tells us how to transform crisis into success. The author has interwoven his personal experience of how he learnt resilience after the traumatic accident which gave him excruciating pain and left him an amputee with prosthetic limbs. "What is to give light must endure pain". Crisis is inevitable. It can be tough and traumatic but it's a great initiator which makes us take decisions during make-or-break points and allows us to connect to our purpose. Author highlights a term called " halftime " which means every life has a halftime just as football or basketball games have. We must assess the first half to see if we perform well if not we have the second half to put it right. Facing crisis becomes more difficult due to our inhibition to admit our vulnerability. We are born vulnerable. When we are children we never have this inhibition but as we grow we think this vulnerability as our weakness. But being v...